The Royal Pursuit (11 page)

Stephen motioned for her and Kent to
join him in the room where they kept their video and computer
equipment. “I wanted you two to be the first ones to see the
digital photos I took. I’ve already emailed them to Reed’s
boss.”

“
The one whose identity is
unknown,” she said thoughtfully. “Why won’t he reveal
himself?”

“
Maybe he’s
shy?”

“
Or maybe he’s a wealthy
man who doesn’t want others to know about his charitable deeds?”
Kent guessed.

“
Anyway, these pictures are
awesome,” Stephen said. He moved the LCD monitor so that it was in
their viewing range and let the pictures speak for
themselves.

Stacey studied the pictures with great
enthusiasm. The beauty and majesty of the city was breathtaking
despite the centuries it spent on the bottom of the ocean floor.
After a good ten minutes of looking at the pictures, she began to
notice a pattern emerging from them. The same six people kept
showing up on the paintings they had found in the three buildings
they had explored earlier that day. There were three men and three
women.

She brought up a picture with the six
people together. The women wore delicate gold crowns on their heads
and long white dresses with white sandals. The men wore thicker
gold crowns and black formal shirts and pants and black
boots.

“
Have you two noticed that
these six people have their pictures in every building we went to
today?” she asked.

Kent blinked. “I hadn’t
noticed.”

“
You’re right!” Stephen
quickly clicked through the pictures on the computer. “These must
have been the leaders of Atlantis.”

“
Why are the men dressed in
black and the women dressed in white?” Kent asked. “The buildings
have rooms full of color.”

“
Maybe they wanted to
balance each other out,” Stacey said. “There are three women and
three men. Then there are three white outfits and three black
outfits. Maybe it symbolized equality between them while
maintaining a position of opposites. White versus black. Men versus
women. But they each wear crowns, so they are equal, though
opposing forces.”

“
Wow.” Stephen whistled.
“That is quite the analysis from a couple of pictures.”

“
Get used to it. She’s
brilliant,” Kent proudly replied.

“
It’s just a guess. I could
be wrong,” she said.

“
Even if you are, it beats
anything I could come up with,” Stephen replied.

“
I’ll write my thoughts
down before I forget.” Stacey ran out of the room to get her pen
and paper, wondering what other discoveries she would make before
their trip was over.

***

In the Wilderness

Planet: Lone

Ann ran up the hill, ignoring the pain
in her side from the arduous journey through the wilderness. She
couldn’t keep up this pace much longer. Optima’s warning echoed
through her mind, compelling her to keep moving. She had to keep
going for the sake of her unborn child, and that meant she couldn’t
stop until she came to a cave.

The suns were quickly setting. Soon it
would be dark, and she didn’t have a flashlight to search her way
through the maze of trees. To make matters worse, the tree branches
were already casting down eerie shadows around her. She tripped
over a tree root and fell against one of the trees.

She took a moment to regroup, wiping
the sweat from her face. Leaning forward with her hands on her
knees, she struggled to catch her breath. She was thirsty and
hungry, but she didn’t have time to do anything about it. She had
to find a cave. Then she could rest. She straightened up and
studied her surroundings.

Where was a cave? Optima told her
there were many caves up here, so it stood to reason there should
be one nearby. She squinted when she caught sight of a hole in the
distance. It looked so far from where she was, but she knew it was
the entrance of a cave. She turned in the direction she needed to
go and pressed onward toward her goal, moving as fast as she
could.

Keep going, she thought. Don’t look
back. The Nical had warned her to keep going. She had to keep
moving.

A half hour later, the suns had set
for the night and darkness surrounded her. The muscles in her legs
ached from running, and the muscles in her arms ached from the many
times she had to pick herself up after falling down. The tree roots
were her biggest obstacle. But even so, she was grateful a vicious
animal hadn’t found her. At least, she assumed carnivorous animals
existed on this planet.

She stopped for a moment to catch her
breath. She could still see the entrance to the cave in the
moonlight. She groaned. The cave seemed so far away from her. Her
eyes fell upon a hollow log lying on the ground. She wondered if
she could fit in there. It would at least give her a place to hide
while she gained enough energy to complete her journey to the
cave.

She crawled inside and collapsed,
finally letting her body relax. The side of her face pressed
against the rough log, but she didn’t notice how clammy and damp it
was. She was too grateful to be alive to care.

After what seemed like forever, her
breathing calmed. She closed her eyes, taking comfort in the
stillness of the night. Then, before she knew it, she drifted off
to sleep.

She wasn’t asleep for more than
fifteen minutes when she felt something brush against her face. The
sensation didn’t register in her mind right away. At first, she
thought it was a breeze, but when it crept across her neck, her
body went rigid. She screamed and quickly crawled out of the
log.

She gasped the cool night air, barely
noticing her sore muscles, then sprinted for the cave. On her way,
she tripped over a tree root and fell on the dirty ground. She spit
the dirt out of her mouth, got up and kept running. She hated this.
She just wanted to get to the cave so she could be safe for the
rest of the night.

By the time she reached the cave, she
realized no one had been chasing her. The thing she’d felt on her
face and neck was probably a harmless insect.

She found a corner in the small cave
and settled into it so she could face the entrance of the cave and
see if anyone or anything was going to come in to hurt her at some
point in the night.

Shivering, she brought her legs up to
her chest and wrapped her arms around them, trying to stay warm.
There was no way she was going to build a fire. Hathor had shown
her how to do that, but she was afraid she would alert the man in
white to her location if she did. She couldn’t sleep, despite her
fatigue. She just stared at the cave’s entrance, praying morning
would soon come.

***

Optima slowly regained consciousness.
She didn’t think she would pass out as she had done. When she
opened her eyes, she saw that she was surrounded by her companions,
who looked worried about her well-being.

Ruler Dour breathed a sigh of relief.
“She will be alright. The stone not only gives us immortality. It
also gives us healing from all ills.”

The Nicals nodded, glad her wounds had
been healed so it was as if she’d never been hurt.

Sando smiled, his hair white with
relief. “You’re safe now. The Queen of Raz will not harm you
anymore.”

She accepted his hand as he helped her
sit up. She glanced around the room and saw that Athen, Jaz, and
Falon were tied to their chairs.

“
Where is the man who came
here?” She almost called him their protector, but that would not be
an accurate statement.

“
He left a moment ago to
visit our library,” Sando replied. “He said if our stone didn’t
heal you, he needed to find a book that would tell us the remedy
for your wounds. Fortunately, that was unnecessary.”

She shook her head, not believing the
man in white. She knew the man was talking to his friend, most
likely discussing the queen’s escape. A shiver raced up her spine.
Did he suspect she had set the queen free?

Forcing aside her worries, she
whispered, “How long will he be gone?”

Sando and Dour leaned closer to her so
they could hear her question.

“
I don’t know. He didn’t
say,” Dour replied. “Is something wrong?”

“
Yes, but I couldn’t tell
you before,” she said. “Can you send someone to stand guard at the
front door of this building and another one to guard the door of
this room? I need to tell you something important. It’s about what
I overheard the man saying in the library.”

Dour turned to Xan and Tan. “Xan, I
need you to stand at the entrance of this building. Signal Tan when
you see the man in white leaving the library. Tan, you will stand
in the doorway of this room and tell us when Xan sends you the
signal.”

The Nicals looked startled at the
command as they watched Xan and Tan hurry to obey Dour.

Tan nodded in their direction, letting
them know the man was still safely inside the library.

Optima took a deep breath and scanned
the people around her in the room. She wasn’t sure where to
begin.

“
What is it, Optima?” Dour
asked.

“
I think we’re pawns in
that man’s plans,” she said. “When I went to tell him we were ready
to capture the Razians and Palers, I overheard him talking to
someone. The person he talked to wasn’t in the room. He was talking
to someone through a device he held in his hand. I could hear the
other person talking, but I couldn’t tell if the person was a man
or a woman.”

She noted Athen and the Palers were
staring intently at her, just as interested in what she had to say
as her companions were.

“
The person he was talking
to said the queen was the one they were after,” she continued. “The
other three captives aren’t of any interest to them. They want to
kill the queen because she’s pregnant. That’s why I had to let her
go. I made it look like she escaped.”

“
Are you sure she’s
pregnant?” Athen asked.

“
Yes, though she didn’t
know it until I told her.”

Athen sighed heavily. “Hathor’s going
to be upset when he finds out. He would have insisted on going in
her place if he had known.” He said it to himself, but Optima was
strangely curious about his comment and the care he seemed to feel
for his friends.

Sando interrupted her thoughts. “What
do the man and his friend want with her child?”

“
Neither one said,” she
replied. “I just know they will kill the queen when they know of
her pregnancy.”

“
That child must be
important,” Dour thoughtfully stated. “And it probably poses a
threat to them.”

Tan turned to them and
waved.

The group dropped the topic, and Tan
and Xan ran into the room and sat with the other Nicals.

“
You’re looking good,
Optima,” Sando cheerfully said as he helped her off the
table.

“
I feel well,” she
replied.

“
You gave us quite a scare
there,” Dour added. “We must be more careful in the
future.”

“
Yes,” she
agreed.

“
I have good news,” the man
in white said as he entered the room. “We can still find the Queen
of Raz. I will have to take a couple of you with me for this
mission. She may no longer have her magic, but she wouldn’t have
left Raz without a backup plan.”

Optima examined the room. She couldn’t
let her fears show in her hair color. She saw the other Nicals had
successfully turned their focus onto other things for none of them
had yellow hair.

Some had blue hair since they were sad
over the fact that this man who was to be their protector was using
them. Most of the fifteen women had green hair for the same reason
she had when she met the queen. They all wanted the ability to
conceive and give birth, as it had been before. Most of the men had
black hair in their determination to remain strong for the women.
None of them had yellow hair. But they hadn’t released the queen,
so they had no reason to think the man would suspect them of
rebelling against him.

She looked at the Razian named Athen,
thinking that seeing him would turn her hair blue since she was
saddened at the thought of him having to worry about the queen of
his planet. But as she studied him, the thought occurred to her
that he was attractive. Instead of her hair turning blue, it turned
pink.

“
I suppose you know
something of her whereabouts,” the man commented, staring at Athen.
“After all, you did come from Raz.”

“
Ruler Dour,” the man
began, “you should come with me this time. Perhaps you can keep an
eye on Optima to ensure she doesn’t allow this Razian to
escape.”

Optima gasped.

“
Yes, you will be joining
us,” the man told her. He tapped his white cane against Athen’s
chains, which automatically fell apart.

Athen took the opportunity to run to
him and tried to knock him down, but the man’s reflexes were
impressive. He dodged his attacker and tripped him with the
cane.